Adaptive receive telescope array for coherent free-space laser communications

In present, conventional system concepts for laser line-of-sight communications, mechanical coarseand ne-pointing units have to be implemented, resulting in a massive and bulky setup. Taking advantage of the phased array's inertia-free steering capability reduces the requirements on the ne-pointing mechanism and could even make it unnecessary. We are currently designing, breadboarding and testing an engineering demonstrator of a phased telescope array, to be used as a receive terminal in a coherent intersatellite laser link. This work is being done under contract of the European Space Agency (ESA). In the following we describe the phased telescope array's principle of operation and the design of the engineering demonstrator. We also present the results of a performance analysis derived from predesign experiments and by computer simulation.